Nightmares
by Silvertounge
Summary: Once again he saw a blinding flash of green light and heard a womans screams. After the final battle Harry's having nightmares but why? HHr, rating for character death.


"_Harry, help me…make it stop!" Cold, maniacal laughter echoed around him. Once again he saw a blinding flash of green light and heard a woman's screams. This time however it was not his mother but-_

"Hermione!" Harry Potter sat straight up in his bed, shaking and drenched in cold sweat. This same scene had been plaguing his dreams since…that night. And now, as he remembered what today was, the urge to lay back in his bed and stay there almost overcame his fear of what he might face in his dreams. Their one-year anniversary, what a wonderful day to bury your girlfriend.

_Flashback_

It was a week before Harry's eighteenth birthday. Seventh year had come and at Hermione's pleading he had gone back to school so his education was complete and he would be able to do something with his lie in the future she was sure awaited them all.

He and Hermione were setting up in the little flat in Diagon Alley that the three of them had chosen to settle in until the war was over. The Order had been busy in the last year, their hunt, Harry felt, increased by Dumbledore's sudden death. It was worth the work though seeing s only one fragment of Voldemort's soul remained. The one inside Voldemort himself. The final battle was quickly approaching, but that fact was overlooked by the young couple as they moved into their first place. Harry and Hermione had started dating a few days after Harry's seventeenth birthday last year and he still swore it was the best gift he had ever gotten, rivaled only by his firebolt.

As Harry walked around now placing wards of all sorts on the flat his girlfriend had to chuckle, "Harry I don't think there were this many wards placed on Hogwarts, you might be overdoing tings just a little bit here."

"One ward could be the difference between my girlfriend or my best mate dying. I couldn't live with myself if I knew I hadn't done absolutely everything in my power to protect you."

Harry pulled himself out of his bed and away from his memories. All of those wards and they hadn't made a bloody difference. The trio had just come in from a midnight celebration of his eighteenth birthday down at the three broomsticks when the message came…

_Flashback_

"Harry, Hermione, Ron!" Lupin's voice came frantically through the two-way mirror the three used to communicate with the order. "There has been n attack at our new headquarters"

Harry had helped move the order into the newly renovated Godrics Hollow just a week before. Placing enough wards of his own to make those placed by the others look insignificant.

"We're outnumbered and Voldemort himself is here, this could be it Harry…" A scream could be heard through the mirror and then Lupin's voice "We need a hero Harry, now more than ever."

Turning to facer his friends Harry asked, "I suppose it's no use asking you lot to stay here?"

"I told you I'd follow you to the end mate, besides mum would kill me herself if she found out I left you now." Ron said, trying desperately to ease the tension in the air. Harry looked pleadingly at Hermione.

He should have known that she wouldn't stay behind. Her determination was one of the he had…no that he _did_ love about her. As he got into the shower he turned the water on as hot as it would go but even that wasn't enough to push the growing chill out of his body.

_Flashback_

Only one loud crack was heard as the trio reached the scene, because Harry, who could apperate silently, refused to let go of Hermione. For all the terror and destruction Harry had seen in his young life nothing could have prepared him for this. There had to be at least fifty deatheaters there, the light of a fire reflecting eerily off their masks. The little house he had helped move the order into, his last tie o his parents was in ruins, part of it still smoldering with sinister blue flames. Everywhere he looked people he knew were lying dead, dying or locked in a loosing battle.

Ron ran off towards Fred or George, Harry couldn't tell which, and began to fight off the deatheaters surrounding him. Harry let go of Hermione but continued to hold her gaze, not sure how to express the emotions he was feeling at this moment. A loud crack startled them out of their silence and, looking around, it appeared most of the deatheaters had disapperated. Some were still locked in battles with Order members unable to get away. As the young couple looked for the cause of the sudden disappearance He came into view.

"Ah, well if it isn't Potter and his little mudblood girlfriend," Voldemort chuckled, "maybe you remember what we like to do with mudbloods, Potter."

As he pushed Hermione away Harry answered, "this fight is between you and me Tom we can leave her and everyone else out of it."

"Manners Potter, you should be punished for showing your elders such disrespect, CRUCIO!"

Reflecting the curse with a shield charm Harry replied, "C'mon now, I remember you teaching me the proper way to duel. If you're going to die today I'm sure you'd like to do it properly. This is the part where we bow," Harry smirked, "and then we can start hexing each other"

The two sides stared at each other, Good and Evil facing off, perfectly balanced in this moment, neither wanting to make the first move against the other. Staring into Tom's red eyes Harry saw how desperate he was to be the winner tonight and he hoped his own desperation was better concealed. The flicker of doubt hiding in those eyes only helped to further Harry's hope that tonight could be the end. The silence was deafening and the tension in the air was cut by one little word.

"Harry mate, c'mon." Ron's voice pulled Harry out of his thoughts and he turned off the shower that had long grown cold. Looking at his reflection in the bathroom mirror Harry was shocked o see the shadow of his former self. "What would Hermione say if she could see you now." He mentally scolded himself. "It doesn't matter what she'd say because she's gone!"

"Gone." The lone word escaped from his lips as he pulled his eyes away from the mirror and started to get dressed. Gone, gone, gone, gone, gone it echoed in his mind.

_Flashback_

"CRUCIO!" One of the deatheaters, Harry wasn't even sure who, screamed and that one word was all it took for the tension to snap. As Voldemort attempted a stunner Harry ducked, scanning about wildly for who the curse had hit. The curses from Voldemort were coming faster now and Harry quickly threw up a shield charm, glancing about for her, trying to make sure she was safe.

Voldemort's booming "Avada-" brought Harry's attention back to the task at hand and as he strengthened his shield charm he felt a familiar sensation. Again the brother wands had connected and a golden cage of light started to form around them. This time however a deatheater ran towards the center, dragging something behind them, placing themselves inside just before the web sealed off the outside world.

Even with the light it was too dark to see the bundle on the ground so Harry focused his attention on forcing the golden balls of light along the center strand towards Tom. As they reached the center he called out "I'd stop that now if I were you."

"And why's that?" Harry questioned.

"Because we're about to show you the real meaning of pain." Simultaneously a woman, Bellatrix, Harry thought wildly to himself, cried out "CRUCIO" and as he prepared to duck as he saw the curse head towards the bundle. Harry's puzzlement lasted only a minute as the bundle began to writhe and then she screamed.

Harry could only watch in horror as his girlfriend, best friend, the one person left in the world he cared the most about screamed on and on. He tried to pull his wand away, tried to move in and protect her but he could not get out of the connection. Her screaming stopped and Harry, his wand still connected to Voldemort's, found the best he could do was call to her.

"'Mione? Can you hear me? I am so sorry none of this ever should have happened. Never." He was sobbing now and he could hear Voldemort's laugh from the other edge of the circle, he could feel is rage boiling over in the pit of his stomach. As Bellatrix cursed Hermione again he heard her screaming, "Harry help me…make it stop."

Harry fell face first in the grass. He heard a whispered curse, followed by a flash of green light, her screams and his laughter. In that moment Harry rose and did the one thing nobody had expected from the-boy-who-just-lost-everything.

"AVADA KEDAVA!" He cried out for his parents, Sirius, Dumbledore, Hermione… everyone who had died because of him. As Harry's bolt of green light hit the still shocked Tom squarely in the chest there was a flash, blinding and white, followed by a crack loud enough that it had to signal mass disapperation. There was only one though on his mind as he raced toward her body lying stiffly in the grass.

He held her for hours. Just sitting there silently apologizing for every time he had teased her or picked a fight with her. For not being stronger tonight, not realizing, not being able to give her the one thing he had promised her…protection.

As he slumped against the wall in the hallway of their overly protected flat all he could think of was how peaceful she looked when he finally let her go that night. Ron stepped into the hallway and saw Harry sitting against the wall tears silently falling down his face, a look of cold determination in his once bright green eyes.

"C'mon mate," he said pulling Harry up, "it's time."

Looking down at her simple headstone Harry tried to contain his tears. It had been three years now since they had buried her and now, on the eve of his twenty-first birthday Harry was finally ready to say good-bye. He carefully placed the bouquet of lilies that had become his custom on the grass at the foot of her gave. Smiling sadly he read over the inscription that was already embedded in his mind.

"Hermione Jane Granger. Loving daughter and friend dedicated student. The world will seem a little dimmer without its brightest star but she will never truly be gone until none remember her. Let that day never come."

As he read along the words he knew so well Harry wiped the last tear from his eyes. Thinking of the world he had lived in without her for three years made him renew the promise he had buried her with, "You're never going to leave us 'Mione, not so long as I'm around."

A gentle breeze blew through the graveyard as Harry turned away, a small smile on his lips and a faint sparkle shining out of his green eyes. There would be no more nightmares tonight.


End file.
